Bacon Rules You Should Never Break

Bacon can be found in countless recipes, and what was once a slice of simple meat enjoyed on its own now finds its way into burgers, brownies, and even jam. But amidst all this, you should never forget about the joy of bacon on its own. Bacon's complex taste comes from its lengthy production process, which starts with the belly of pigs reared on a varied, nutritious diet. 

The pork belly is then brined and smoked, with the types of wood used, including apple, hickory, or maple, each of them giving the meat its own unique flavor. Finally, the belly is sliced into bacon pieces, which inevitably end up in our skillets, and then on our plates.

When bacon is made well, all these stages are performed with love, care, and attention. And this makes getting it right in the kitchen even more important so that you don't end up ruining a quality product with poor technique. But cooking bacon, like anything else, is a process, and there are certain rules that you should follow to the letter to get the best from your meat.

Bacon can feel like one of those meat products that last forever. This is, perhaps, because people assume that the curing and smoking process preserves it in some way, giving it a similar quality to dry salami or cooked chorizo. But bacon, as raw meat, is entirely perishable, and leaving it too long may result in your meat spoiling and potentially becoming unsafe to eat.

So don't leave your bacon chilling out too long: Cook it quickly. If you haven't opened your bacon yet, you have a fairly generous window of time before it goes off, with roughly two weeks until it spoils. Opened, raw bacon will spoil faster, thanks to the meat's contact with oxygen, contributing to microbe growth. You will have up to a week to use your bacon if you've already opened it, although that isn't a totally hard-and-fast rule. 

If you notice that your bacon changes color, feels sticky to the touch, or smells sour or rancid, throw it out. The most important thing to do is to follow the "use-by" date instruction on the back of your pack to the letter, or if you're buying it from a butcher, ask them when you should cook it by.

One key thing to remember about bacon is that it's not made the same way every time, and you should be rigorous about which type you use for which recipe. Bacon generally falls into two categories, smoked — which is the most common — and unsmoked. 

Smoked bacon, as you might expect, undergoes a smoking process, which is either done by smoking the meat with heavily-scented wood chips or by injecting the meat with liquid smoke and placing it in an oven. This gives the meat a way more intense flavor and, naturally, a smokiness. Unsmoked bacon bypasses this step but still has a salty, developed flavor thanks to being cured in a mixture of sugar, salt, spices, and preservatives.

It's important not to use one type of bacon where the other would be better, as doing so may either underpower or overpower your dish. For bacon that you're enjoying on its own, for example, we'd recommend using the smoked variety. As smoking adds extra layers of flavor, you get to enjoy all of them when the bacon's taste isn't being distracted by other things. 

On the other hand, in situations where the bacon serves to add salt and fat as its primary flavor notes, it's better to go for unsmoked. Unsmoked is also the better choice if you're using it in recipes that have other smoked elements, such as stews containing kielbasa or andouille.

"Mise en place" is a key practice for chefs around the world, in which people working in kitchens ensure their food is prepared as it can be before they do the final cooking process, saving time in a busy kitchen. In some kitchens, this can extend to partly-cooking ingredients, like parboiling potatoes or blanching vegetables. But when it comes to bacon, it should never be cooked in two sittings and only ever in one shot.

When you partly cook bacon, you may not heat it up to an internal temperature where any potential bacteria inside are killed, according to the USDA. You may not also subsequently do so if you're finishing it off later on, meaning that you still leave yourself and anyone you're feeding vulnerable to foodborne illness. 

According to Healthline and the CDC, bacon can host a number of microbes that cause illness, including Salmonella and infection from roundworms or tapeworms. Always ensure that you're cooking the meat through entirely before serving it. The USDA also reported that it's entirely fine to reheat fully-cooked bacon, but just make sure you're heating it through fully so that you limit the risk of foodborne bacteria that's taken residence after the meat was cooked.

If you're cooking a large meal, getting the bacon out of the way first before you focus on the other components can seem wise. But doing this can leave your food susceptible to harmful bacteria. Once you've finished cooking food, it will immediately begin to drop in temperature, quickly coming down into what's known as the "danger zone." This is the temperature range that provides the ideal habitat for bacteria like E. coli and Salmonella to grow and multiply.

The danger zone is between 40 to 140 degrees Fahrenheit; in certain conditions, bacteria can duplicate in number in 20 minutes when food is sitting at this temperature. While you can leave food out for a short amount of time, anything that's been sitting out for over 2 hours will begin to be unsafe, and your cooked bacon should be eaten or put in the fridge. 

This period might be even shorter — as small as an hour — if it's an especially warm day or if your kitchen is particularly hot. If you are making your bacon ahead of time and refrigerating it, though, make sure that you let it cool properly before putting it in. Placing warm food in the fridge can produce condensation and raise the overall interior temperature of the machine. ‌

The starting point of your bacon will significantly affect how it turns out. It's easy to forget sometimes that fridges are chilled to near-freezing temperatures, and cooking meat from that cold of a point can cause it to cook unevenly. 

When cold meat hits a hot pan, the muscle fibers in it tighten immediately, and this can make it difficult to cook through evenly. This may be particularly problematic for thick-cut bacon, which needs longer in the pan to cook through properly, and this can leave you with bacon that's burnt on the outside and underdone in the middle.

Bacon is also tricky to cook when cold because of its high-fat content. Fat and meat warm up at different rates, with fat lagging behind and taking longer. Therefore, if you're taking a cold piece of meat from the fridge and putting it directly in the pan, your meat will cook before your fat does, again resulting in an uneven end product. 

The solution, though, is just to plan ahead slightly. Take your meat out of the fridge 15 minutes before you cook it. This will give it enough time to warm up. To speed things up even more, separate the slices, placing them on a plate. ‌

Bacon needs a bit of space at times. And this is never truer than when it's cooking. If you cook too many slices of bacon at once, the heat from the pan cannot escape properly, instead getting trapped and forming steam. This steam then changes into water, which essentially then simmers the bacon instead of frying it.

A further problem is created by the fact that bacon can have water added to its meat, which can occur during the brining process, and which also has the effect of making the bacon seem plumper and bigger. But when it comes into contact with a hot pan, this water can then leak out, and if there's too much bacon in there, the water has nowhere to go. 

The key is to be sparing with the amount of bacon you put in the pan at any time. If you give the slices enough space, the released water will evaporate properly. Your bacon will then be able to crisp up instead of remaining water-logged.